This update has been a long time coming. We swear by the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" motto, but the truth is the old version was slowly but inevitably becoming broken. The final straw was Invision ending their support for it, meaning no more security updates. So for better or worse, here it is.

We put a lot of effort into making the transition as smooth as possible. Hopefully we even succeeded. Apart from the refreshed look there's a number of convenience improvements and a few new functions, but we'll let you discover those on your own.

If you spot any problems, please report them in this thread. This includes anything from layout/skin issues to actual bugs in the board functions.

THINGS TO DEAL WITH:The old skins are gone. Due to the changes in the board code it was technically impossible to import them and practically infeasible to adapt each one of them. This includes the Classic skin which I personally mourn the most - but to be fair, it was already ported from an even older version of IPB. However, we spent many long hours making the new skin as bullshit-free as possible and in fact we made keeping it in the Classic spirit the design goal. I'm really proud of and happy with the result, so we hope you'll also learn to love it soon enough.The avatars may be messed up. This new IPB version did away with the somewhat redundant User Photo which you could store alongside your Avatar. In some cases it seems to have preserved the former, in others the latter. Check your avatar and update it if needed.Externally hosted avatars are no longer allowed. Mainly for security reasons. Just upload your avatar via your profile.The new editor. Don't say a word about the new editor or the puppy will die. There's enough shitstorm everywhere about Invision doing the Apple thing and shoving the new editor down everyone's throat so we don't need any of that here. We'll continue to work on improving it, ideally hacking the old editor back in, but unfortunately it's not as straightforward as it sounds. Until then, it is what it is.

THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN THE FUTURE:More banners! In the long-standing tradition we'll have a call for banners soon. But don't fire your photoshops up just yet - there are some technical changes so wait for the announcement lest you waste your time on something we can't use. We also took the opportunity to improve the rotating banner code while porting it for the new board so now it's easier than ever to use it. The new skin already has it implemented and any future skins will inherit it as well.More skins! While the old skins had to go the good news is that the new version of IPB is much easier to skin than the previous one. We also took great care when modifying the default skin to what you see now, so it's much less of a hack job than before and much easier to use as a basis for a new skin. For those of you who in the Skins group, please don't go tinkering with them yet until we post detailed skinning guidelines as we want to make sure it's done right.Other exciting stuff that's slowly brewing in the backs of our twisted minds.

Except for the smilies, the editor doesn't seem different than the old one.

What are some changes (that you might have already fixed) ?

Having (updated) versions of the old Classic skin user-banners (Members, Moderators, Admins etc.) would be cool. I'm really not into this girly bubble stuff. lol
If you give me the needed width/height and old banners, I'd be up for remaking them into versions for a sub-skin or, if that's possible with the new version, icon pack.

I might still have .psds of the old banners I made (don't have my laptop so I can't check), but it might be silly for me to recontribute them since they involve old members (4-nin S/mileage, Mano, MM pre-Gaki graduation).

I really dig the new skin, myself. I'd also love to contribute by making some skins later on.

Also I think the smilies section is a lot cleaner and easier to navigate. It would be sweet if the board had an option to let you pick favorites or something. Although it kind of sucks not seeing the actual code for the smiley so you can learn them. Oh well. (Obviously this is default for the IPB style, so I'm not blaming anyone or anything.) Oh, if I click "Show All" then I can see the code. WELL YAY.

Thanks everyone! I'm glad you're happy with it for the most part. Because if you weren't I'd need to poke you with a sharp stick until you became happy.

Except for the smilies, the editor doesn't seem different than the old one.What are some changes (that you might have already fixed) ?

What's wrong with the editor? Does it not use standard bbs code or something?

It's a completely different editor on the backend. I didn't touch it at all yet because it's a whole new can of worms. The main issue is that rich text is its primary mode and plain text is purposely crippled - eg. when typing in plain text mode you can no longer use the formatting buttons or select a piece of text and press Ctrl+B to add bbcode for bold. Personally I find rich text editing insufferable and never use it so it's a major annoyance for me.

On the bright side the editor is actually a 3rd party application which seems pretty well documented so I hope to be able to make it more usable. But I need some rest from editing code before I dive into it.

Having (updated) versions of the old Classic skin user-banners (Members, Moderators, Admins etc.) would be cool. I'm really not into this girly bubble stuff. lolIf you give me the needed width/height and old banners, I'd be up for remaking them into versions for a sub-skin or, if that's possible with the new version, icon pack.

Personally I'd love to see the Classic skin remade 100% like it was for the previous version, not just having the icons and stuff replaced. It's definitely doable, though it won't be easy. Read below.

I really would like in the Skins group if possible.

I'd also love to contribute by making some skins later on.

Did you ever work on creating/editing skins for IPB? Because if you haven't then you don't know what you're getting yourself into. Making pretty icons and banners is really like 5% of the work, the rest is screwing around in CSS and HTML/PHP.

If you think you're up for it, then that's great. But don't expect things to start moving in the next week or two. I want to make sure that the base skin has no issues left in the first place, and there's still a lot of code cleanup I need to do as well. I also need to document the customizations I've made so that a person creating a new skin has an idea what's going on. And we need to figure out with Berry how to approach letting people edit the skins, eg. any criteria or past work examples. Skinning means having access to the board's control panel and possibility to mess things up on the backend, so that's a lot of responsibility.

To give you a rough time scale, some time towards the end of Summer would be the earliest.

I might still have .psds of the old banners I made (don't have my laptop so I can't check), but it might be silly for me to recontribute them since they involve old members (4-nin S/mileage, Mano, MM pre-Gaki graduation).

For the current skin we'll only want banners with the current MM lineup so redoing old ones wouldn't work. But do keep them in case we create a retro skin or something like that in the future.

Also, I think aine got it wrong when he said Skinning is easier. It's about the same.

I guess I just got so much better at it.

Save for the Facebook-like crap I really like this version of IPB.

You have no idea just much Facebook-like crap I had to scrub away already from the original IPB skin.

Also I think the smilies section is a lot cleaner and easier to navigate. It would be sweet if the board had an option to let you pick favorites or something. Although it kind of sucks not seeing the actual code for the smiley so you can learn them. Oh well. (Obviously this is default for the IPB style, so I'm not blaming anyone or anything.) Oh, if I click "Show All" then I can see the code. WELL YAY.

The old editor actually let you show all smileys in a panel on the edit page rather than a separate window as well as let you click smileys when editing in plain text which is just one of the many woes of the new editor. But if you don't give into the temptation of using rich editor all the time then you'll learn the bbcodes of your favourite smilieys in no time.

Any ETA on a mobile version coming back?

It was already there but not accessible due to a bug. It should kick in automatically when you access the BBS with your mobile thingamajig now. If not, scroll to the bottom of the full screen and click Use Mobile Version.

Did you ever work on creating/editing skins for IPB? Because if you haven't then you don't know what you're getting yourself into. Making pretty icons and banners is really like 5% of the work, the rest is screwing around in CSS and HTML/PHP.

I've never worked on IPB stuff but I have significant experience with CSS/HTML/PHP so I could take a gander at it and see if it's something I can actually manage to work with. I definitely expect it to be very involved and time consuming, but I love designing and don't have many outlets to do that for lately.

Sidenote: Holy cow, replying to a quote with this rich text garbage is a pain in the ass

When you do skins, here's an idea, name them and model them after MM singles. This current one is very Seishun Collection.

Oops, I missed your post when replying before. But I like the idea. A skin for each single would be excessive, but a Retro H!P skin is something that's been on mind for a while so you idea would fit into it.

Was the pseudo-code and custom-tags stuff removed from the new skins editor or is it still present ?

Not really sure what you mean by pseudo-code and custom-tags, but if you mean the way it uses parse tags and handles variables, then I'm afraid it has not significantly changed.

Actually I did some skinning for super old-school IPB. :p Plus if I take a long time, I can work on CSS and stuff.

I've never worked on IPB stuff but I have significant experience with CSS/HTML/PHP so I could take a gander at it and see if it's something I can actually manage to work with. I definitely expect it to be very involved and time consuming, but I love designing and don't have many outlets to do that for lately.

Cool, I'll keep that in mind for when we're ready to open skin contributions. But as I said, don't expect that to happen for the next few months.